Real Reading

Since last week we have been talking about real reading.  What is real reading?  Real reading to me is when students realize that they must interact with text.  I remember when I was younger I had not made this realization.  I would read the words on the page but nothing was going inside my head.  This year I want to show students what goes on in my head as we read.

Last Friday Ms. Cavallaro and I showed the student a lesson called reading cereal.  Reading cereal is just a visual exercise that tries to show students how we think when we read.  During the lesson we read one of my favorite books Charlie Anderson.

As we read this amazing book, we would add text cereal to our cereal bowls.  That text would make us think so we would add thinking milk to our cereal bowl, because cereal needs milk just like reading needs thinking.  Hopefully this lesson allowed the students to see what goes on inside our head as we read text.

Today we wanted to continue to talk about the idea that reading is thinking.  This year on Mondays students will read an Article of the Week.  When we read this article, we will practice a new technique that allows the students to think as they read.  Today before the students read their Article of the Week we modeled Two Column Notes as we read an article about ALS.  

Two Column Notes follows the same idea as that reading cereal lesson.  At the top of the left column in our notes we wrote "It Says" and on the right we wrote "I Say."  The "It Says" refers to the text and the "I Says" is what the students think about the text.  The students search for parts of the text that makes them think and they write it in the "It Says" column.  Then on the right side they share their thinking about that text.  This is a great idea of something you could do at home from time to time to reinforce the idea of real reading.  It really allows you to see what is going on inside someones head as they read.

As we were hoping might happen, some of our students made the connection to the article about ALS and the recent Ice Bucket Challenge.  We were quickly challenged by the class to participate.  We gladly accepted and will complete the challenge this Friday.  Before we take the challenge on Friday, we are going to try and raise as much money as possible to donate to the ALS Association.  We will have a bucket in the room where students can make donations all week.  On Friday Ms. Cavallaro and myself will count it all up, soak ourselves with ice water, and then send the money to the ALS Association.  

I hope you all had a great start to your week and I hope that you can all keep checking in with the blog.